Saturday, January 25, 2020

Censoring Curse of the Vampire in Gredown's Vampire Mania


Curse of the Vampire was originally published in Eerie's Horror Tales v3#4, July 1971, and reprinted a number of times in other Eerie magazines. I've managed to check scans of two of these reprints and they appear to be as per the reprint in the in Horror Tales v8#2, May 1977, which is one of a handful of original Eerie mags I have to hand. 

Here's a scan of the splash page to Curse of the Vampire from Horror Tales:


Compare this to the reprint in Gredown's Vampire Mania:


Yes, the blood has been wiped clean, but what I especially appreciate is the attention to detail required to erase the worm from the skull's eye socket in the second panel.

This is the third page of the story: 


Gredown erased the blood in the sixth panel too:


Here's the fourth page of the story:


Blood is one thing, and most of it was camouflaged in the third panel, and it was ok by the fifth panel - probably because they were distracted by the nipples in the fourth panel:


This is the final page of the original story:


Yeah, the nudity in the first panel is not going to cut it, and the top is back in the third panel:


And of course, stabbing is ok in the fifth panel as long as the jam doesn't spurt out.

I expect there is an unadulterated printing of Curse of the Vampire in an earlier Gredown edition or two.

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